NEWS

WIRES

OTHER

Walgreens Restructures Health Care Divisions to Provide Integrated Pharmacy, Health and Wellness Solutions

"Simply put, we are integrating Walgreens 70,000 health care providers, on the front lines of health care across the organization, with a unified sales team offering pharmacy, health and wellness solutions for the benefit of our payer clients and their patients," said Walgreens President and CEO Greg Wasson.

"In the past several years, Walgreens has developed a broad set of quality, affordable and accessible pharmacy, health and wellness services unmatched in our industry," said Wasson. "We are now aligning these services across the entire company, enabling us to provide services to payers as a single, seamless integrated solution."

Walgreens Health Services (WHS) Division's specialty pharmacy, infusion pharmacy, mail service pharmacy, medical campus pharmacies, long-term care pharmacy and home care services will move to the company's core Pharmacy Division, which is led by Executive Vice President Kermit R. Crawford.

As well, Joe Terrion, currently Chief Client Officer responsible for the company's Health and Wellness Division sales and client services organization, will now lead the new, combined "Pharmacy, Health and Wellness Solutions" sales and client services organization. Terrion will continue to report to Hal F. Rosenbluth, Walgreens Senior Vice President and President of the Health and Wellness Division.

Similarly, the WHS pharmacy benefit solutions group (Walgreens Health Initiatives, Inc.) will become the responsibility of Peter Hotz, Walgreens Vice President and President of Take Care Health Employer Solutions group, who also will continue to report to Rosenbluth.

"Kermit and Hal will bring together all our pharmacy, health and wellness services and take them to the marketplace as a single, robust integrated offering," said Wasson. "Kermit's 27 years of experience and strong leadership at Walgreens will ensure that we provide premier service, cohesively and comprehensively across our full range of pharmacy operations. And Hal's strength and decades of experience in leading B2B sales and service organizations will enable us to meet or exceed our clients' expectations for integrated pharmacy, health and wellness solutions."

Through more than 8,000 points of care, Walgreens "Pharmacy, Health and Wellness Solutions" will combine pharmacy services (including more than 7,100 retail drugstores, over 100 medical campus pharmacies, specialty and infusion pharmacy service, mail service pharmacy and long-term care pharmacy), preventive health and wellness services (including retail and worksite health centers and immunization services, home medical equipment and supplies, respiratory services and chronic care management), and pharmacy benefit administrative services (including integrated reporting and outcomes analysis).

The company also said that Stanley B. Blaylock, Walgreens Senior Vice President and President of Walgreens Health Services, has decided to leave the company in April after a transition period. Blaylock was a co-founder and CEO of Medmark Specialty Pharmacy Solutions before the company was acquired by Walgreens in 2006. He intends to pursue new entrepreneurial opportunities in the health care field.

"Walgreens has been fortunate to have Stan's leadership and industry experience at a time when we greatly expanded our specialty and home care businesses," said Wasson. "He helped to nurture and grow these businesses with a relentless client focus into mature entities, where they can now be fully integrated into our pharmacy operations. We thank Stan for all he did through his vision, his ingenuity and his drive to position our company for the future."

The company concluded by saying that in addition to providing a unified offering to payers in the health care marketplace, this strategic restructuring of its health care divisions is expected to result in increased efficiencies across Walgreens pharmacy, health and wellness operations, and provide savings in overhead as some overlapping functions are consolidated.

Walgreens (www.walgreens.com) is the nation's largest drugstore chain with fiscal 2009 sales of $63 billion. The company operates 7,162 drugstores in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Walgreens provides the most convenient access to consumer goods and services and cost-effective pharmacy, health and wellness services in America through its retail drugstores and Walgreens Health and Wellness Division. The division includes Take Care Health Systems, the largest and most comprehensive manager of worksite health and wellness centers and in-store convenient care clinics, with more than 700 locations throughout the country.

Walgreens
Michael Polzin
(847) 914-2920
http://news.walgreens.com